Not For The Faint Of Heart

I want to start by thanking Belly Love Spa for allowing me to share my experiences, in addition to the readers who have joined me on this journey this past month. In saying goodbye, I thought I’d do a quick wrap-up of this 2-month period and some of its challenges, as without them, I wouldn’t be the mother I am today. So please join me one last time, as we recount some of the good, the bad, and the ugly of childrearing.

The parenting fails. No matter how responsible of an adult you are, much like the rhythm, sleep deprivation is going to get you. There was the time that Pat and I were grocery shopping, and I left him in one aisle to visit another section 3 aisles down. Minutes later, he appeared before me…without the cart. It took approximately 30 seconds of me giving him my best Jeffrey Dahmer impression before he realized that he’d left the baby in the other aisle. Or there was the time when we went to Disney World for the Epcot Food & Wine Festival. We had just gotten off a ride when I picked up the baby without first using hand sanitizer. Congratulations, mom, you’ve just given your child Ebola.

When I found out that I was pregnant, there was one thought that pervaded all others, and it was this: My best friend was getting married two weeks after my due date. The thought was all consuming and I was deeply concerned with taking the correct course of action, both as it pertained to my closest friend and to my unborn child. So when I had my new patient consultation with a potential OBGYN and she asked me if I had any questions, the first thing out of my mouth was, “My best friend is getting married 2 weeks after my due date. Tell me I can still go?” The doctor was rather amused and asked if there weren’t any other pressing questions I’d like addressed first. I must have looked at her as if she had 3 heads. This WAS the most pressing question I had in my arsenal. And so I simply looked at her quizzically, until she reassured me that all would be well and that we’d discuss my options in depth and formulate a plan. Hired.

A few weeks passed and I began to cycle through my options, realizing that new questions arose with each alternative. Was it preferable to take my newborn on a flight with me or to leave her behind? And if I were to leave her behind, how much would I have to pump? Would I be able to supplement with formula if I weren’t able to pump enough? I needed answers. So I turned to the pregnancy message boards I had begun to frequent and ventured on over to the “Babies: 0-3 Months” forum in order to present my query.

Never could I have predicted the response that followed. These women acted as though I had asked for their thoughts on infant waterboarding. The amount of vitriol spewed in my general direction made me double-check my license to make sure I wasn’t, in fact, Casey Anthony. I half expected Child Protective Services to show up at my door and put a lien on my unborn child. It was incredible. I was called a bad mom, cursed at, and generally treated with a remarkable amount of disdain. According to them, if I took my baby on a plane, she’d most assuredly come down with a case of the West Nile virus, and were I to leave her at home, it’d inevitably disrupt the bonding process, causing her to grow up to be a serial killer. In the end, I was told in no uncertain terms that this was impossible and that I needed to get my priorities in order.

When you take the time to reflect on the present, as I have upon the commencement of this blog, you inevitably begin to reminisce about the past as well. As such, I thought I’d take you on a journey back through time and bring you up to speed on some of the major moments of my pregnancy. Of course, there’s the first ultrasound, where it’s confirmed that you are, indeed, having a blob. And who could forget the first episode of peeing while vomiting? Good times. And then there’s pregnancy brain. Dear sweet pregnancy brain. Like the time my best friend sent me a toy for the baby and I couldn’t figure out why the company had decided to make the car so unnaturally long. (It was a limo.) But some moments are simply more monumental than others and, subsequently, warrant greater attention. Like the time you peed on a stick and got a big fat positive, for instance.

Worries: pregnant women and moms alike are consumed by them. We worry about miscarrying in the first trimester; about the quad screens and anatomy scans of the second; and about delivering a healthy baby in the third, while remaining healthy ourselves. And don’t even get me started on the number of worries that plague new moms (Why is she not sleeping? Will she ever sleep? What do I need to do to get her to sleep? Oh thank goodness, her eyes are finally closed. OH MY GOD, IS SHE ALIVE?!?!). There is one universal cause for concern, however, that is often kept quiet, but no doubt leads to tremendous angst and widespread panic amongst the pregnant masses. And that deeply troublesome worry, the one that keeps us awake at night drenched in our own anxiety-filled sweat, is that our babies will be ugly.

Make no mistake, babies can, in fact, be unattractive, even though the general public might like you to believe otherwise. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been told that all babies are beautiful. Oh really? Then what the hell is that thing staring back at me on my Facebook newsfeed that looks like it should be kept on retainer in the event that The Goonies ever needs to be remade? I feel like a baby again myself with the night terrors I’m about to experience in the wake of having to see that thing. Please, tell me again how all babies are beautiful while I’m curled up in the fetal position, rocking myself back and forth like an escaped mental patient, willing myself not to go back to sleep. Listen, at the end of the day, we all go through awkward stages (See: My Elementary School Unibrow) and, the truth is, ugly babies need love, too. Just keep Quasimodo off of my social media platforms and we’ll do just fine.

When I was pregnant, the concept of breastfeeding was not one that I was comfortable with. The “girls” had always been reserved for my husband and I was in no hurry to add another customer into the mix. Plus, the descriptions found in how-to blogs and articles made me cringe at every direction. “Tease his/her lower lip with your nipple.” “Let his/her tongue massage the areola.” Uh, yeah, no thanks. Was this my first interaction with my newborn or an episode of the Red Shoe Diaries? The whole thing seemed certifiably creepy. Not to mention the pre-pregnancy feeling I had gotten when witnessing others breastfeed in public. Yeah, ma’am, could you kindly put your sex organs away? I didn’t come for the live show.

Nevertheless, I had every intention on breastfeeding, simply because I was well-versed in the benefits it provided for both me and the baby. I knew it was the best way to provide her with the antibodies necessary to guard against infection and I knew that it lowered my chances for certain forms of cancer. Last, but certainly not least, I knew that the ladies looked phenomenal, and I didn’t hate the idea of those milk-filled fun bags hanging around for another year. After all, in the wake of the horrors of pregnancy and childbirth, my husband deserved some kind of reward, didn’t he? So breastfeeding remained firmly in my plans. I just wasn’t happy about it.

When I was first told during a late-pregnancy ultrasound that Brooke was breech and that I’d need a C-section were she to remain so, I actually found myself to be quite relieved. I was never one of those people who felt like they needed to go through the experience of “natural” childbirth in order to embrace my womanhood. In fact, I had been running from my second X chromosome for as long as I could remember. Honestly, who actually liked being a girl? I just didn’t understand. So when the news broke, I was surprisingly at ease, and the audible sigh of relief from my husband did not go unheard. It was the unmistakable sound of a man who was not going to lose his wife’s lady parts to the horrors of childbirth. Up until then, I got the distinct feeling that he saw my vajayjay as a virtual dead man walking, and now, she had just been given a last minute stay of execution. Justice had been served. So while others were putting bags of frozen peas at the top of their bellies in an attempt to encourage their little ones to move further south, I had that same bag of frozen peas perched happily above my fine china. I was sending a message to Brooke that was loud and clear (read: cold and uncomfortable): stay where you are.

Pregnancy was a blessing. And by that, I mean that it felt like a gift that could have only been bestowed by Satan himself. When it came to prenatal ailments, I ran the gauntlet. Having been diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, I suffered from nausea and vomiting for the entire duration of the 9 months, landing me in the hospital twice, and the dehydration from which contributed to preterm labor. I had such bad sciatic pain that, despite being terrified of needles, I resorted to in-home acupuncture treatments just so that I could get out of bed. And the hormones. Oh, the hormones. In my first trimester, I became so enraged at my husband that I took a key to his game of Madden and then proceeded to throw the PlayStation in the pool, just for good measure. Never mind the fact that I enjoyed and played the PS3 just as much as he, I was a woman making a statement. And that statement was that I was insane.

So when it came time to take our little girl home from the hospital, I was wholly unconcerned. Surely, the struggles ahead would be nothing compared to those that I encountered during pregnancy. And for the most part, I was right. Thanks to the roughly 1,789 hours I had spent Googling during the previous 9 months, I felt remarkably prepared and never suffered from the first-time-mom syndrome of feeling like I didn’t know what to do. Despite experiencing a rather difficult recovery from my C-section, I felt good. This was a breeze! I was a natural!

Hello, and welcome to my blog! As a mom of Irish twins, my life has taken an interesting turn. And as we all know, misery loves company. So join me while I uncover the good, the bad, and the ugly of childrearing. But be prepared, this ain't your mama's mom blog.